Comment by duped
8 hours ago
> Whereas everyone here seems to assume it's to avoid NIMBY
Literally every data center project that gets announced near me gets protested at council meetings, petitioned, and multiple series of reddit/bluesky posts about the project.
It's hard to put into words for HN how deeply locals resent tech companies and AI. You could call it NIMBY, but the hatred is deeper than that.
The sentiment is "you have enough money, go away. Your business is fundamentally bad."
It's pretty wild. People around me are complaining that their electric bill tripled and blaming data centers for it. No, your rates didn't triple in the last year. Your bill went up because you used way more electricity, probably because it's been ass-freezingly cold.
My rate has been consistently 40-60% higher over the last year independent of weather
Your rate, or your bill? I'm seeing people complain about their bills. None of them ever come back and discuss how much of the change was due to changes in their rate versus changes in their usage.
They all blindly chant "no datacenters" across all forms of social media.
Ironic.